Green water!

[Jezbecuz]

I am having the worst green water problem! It all started when I used a new bulb that i was told would be great for my anemone, it is a coral sun 18w actinic 420? Anyway i took it out and went back to my old lighting which works great, and the water went back to normal in about 3 days. In about 3 weeks the water kept getting greener. Now it is totally green. I have a 30g tank, protein skimmer, and power filter. Stocked with live rock, sabae anemone, 2 perc clowns, 2 tomato clowns, and 1 very shy yellow damsel. The anemone is probably going to die because the only way the water gets clearer is if i turn the light off, its hanging in there though. I've been patient with it for about 2 months, my new tank is 7-8 mos old. I've been pretty lucky for the past year until now!

thanks!

[Osiris]

How often are you doing water changes? and lighting sounds like it's NO lighting, be best to get some PC's on there unless u do already. Now i am not famaliar with green water in saltwater, only green algae growing on glass lol. I would check out here, someone locally might be able to check out ur system and help u out...

Our local wisconsin Reef/saltwater forum is:
www.madisonreef.com

HTH
MP

[hail_sniper]

green water? jeese, i didnt think that was possible in sw, goodluck lol

[TheOldSalt]

It's pretty hard to do. We used to grow marine greenwater cultures for feeding the rotifers for feeding the clownfish, and to .. waitaminute... to do that we had to leave the lights on pretty much all the time. Jezbecuz, you said to turn the light off was the only way to get the green to fade. Are you by any chance leaving the tank lit all the time?
Nah....
I suppose you must have jumpstarted some microalgae when you switched to the actinic light, and once it got a foothold it kept growing. Either that or you added some algae along with some specimen at around the same time. It's possible that dead algae is rotting to feed the new algae faster than the skimmer can remove the nutrients. The reduced light penetration may also be killing your live rock, thereby releasing algae food and making the cycle continue. A water change would also add trace minerals aplenty, but it's still not a bad idea. In your situation I would add a rapidflow water polishing filter to physically remove as much of the algae as possible before making the water change, and then cut back the lighting a bit until it was gone. One of those schnellenfilssers ( quickfilters ) that mount on the bottom of a powerhead should clear things up in a hurry, but many other models would work just fine.

What color is the anemone? It might turn out that the lights aren't doing it any good anyway.

[Damon]

I would assume that greenwater in a SW tank is the same (or of similiar genus or family) as the FW variety. High nitrates and high light often trigger this in FW.

[Fishfirst]

What about RO/DI? actually I think I talked to her and refered her to here at petsmart... around this area (central wisconsin), phosphate is high due to agriculture... I thought RO/DI would help her situation. Then after she left I thought of a UV sterilizer, that may help her situation too.

[TheOldSalt]

Good calls, Fishfirst!

When things are this bad, the algae should be removed as much as possible before zapping with UV. Otherwise you get dead algae soup, a surge of ammonia, and dead everything-else soup.

[mlefev]

Well if you like fish stock for your soup...I guess it could work....